it’s chutes and ladders
and ups and downs
and elevators that go to nowhere
and people who talk to much
and the quiet ones
who you always have to worry about
and there’s just so much noise
and noise and noise
excessive noise
and there’s cars that rip by
and invisible night pedestrians
in all black who you almost hit
who you only see in your rear view mirror
and they’re condemning the building
to make a church
and they’re imploding the church
to make a big box business store
and the grass dies beneath the floorboards
but the people live above the linoleum
and there’s a man playing a violin
and the sun is out and its day
and we’re bustling and bustling
and we’re packing the groceries
into the cart
and we are hunters
fierce commercial hunters
and we are bringing home the bacon
to the twelve screaming baby birds
and we are feeding them the worm
and raising them to fly
and teaching them to move
at five hundred miles per hour
like the rest of
and the hustle and the bustle
continues on and we are blurs in transit
we are smears on the sides of car windows
and some of us are flies on the windshield
but there is no time to stop
because we have our final destination in mind
and we have no clue how to get there
and the gps is sending us in circles
and the cabby doesn’t speak english
and the line is out the door
and we’re moving, we’re moving
we’re constantly in motion
the world is turning and somedays
it is turning against us
but we keep in motion
at a pace faster than those before us
and the escalators ascend us to heaven
where we check out through the fast lane
ten items or less
with twenty things in our carts
and we are opening the back gate of the minivan
and we are shuffling around the city
and we are listening to the radio song
at 60 beats per minute
and we are motion
we are constant constant motion
and we are double-lane fast food
we are roaring engine
we are dying phone battery
and did anyone notice the violin player?

picture this:
in the center of it all is a big red house
in front of the house a man holds his wife
they smile
the woman is pregnant and happy
she looks very coy
he looks very proud to hold her
they look fairly well off
somewhere off in the background
there is a spotted dog running around
searching for something
there is a white fence around the house
the sky is blue, of course
really blue
there’s some horses
very handsome horses
the grass is green and flourishing
off in the distance are hills
great hills
they go on forever
there’s desert dust at their feet
there’s a red convertible in the driveway
there’s a beat up old truck on the road
there’s something in the window
a glimmer of a light
maybe a christmas tree
maybe something secret
the clouds in the sky were made by god
a very specific god
who shines down upon this family
a very specific type of sunshine
there’s a chimney on the roof
with smoke rising up out of it
it’s all just as you’d imagine

you can see the brushstrokes
and the dust its collected
over the years